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Festival of the Pumpkin
Oct. 15th, 2006 08:25 amSo, Thanksgiving has come and gone and Halloween is approaching. And everywhere in Toronto there are pumpkins.
Seriously.
Pumpkins in the greengrocers, stacked row upon row. Pumpkins in store windows, tastefully arranged with garlands of plastic autumn leaves. Pumpkins in the florists, in what is actually pretty creative arrangments. Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere, big glowing orange beachball sized gourds, awaiting people to buy them, take them home, scoop out the insides and carve spooky faces on them, whilst making the rest into sweet pumpkin pie.
But only the orange ones are pumpkins. The rest, including the faithful butternut of my student housing years (mmm, pumpkin soup), are called squashes here. Dex and I mock-argue over it every time we buy one.
"Pumpkin!"
"Squash!"
"Pumpkin!"
"Squash!"
"Pumpkin! It's a pumpkin where I'm from!"
"You Australians are all insane."
Unfortunately I shall miss Halloween, being in the land Down Under for that time. But Thanksgiving was fun, tho'. A vertible metric tonne of food, including enough roasted veggies to make even me go, "Eh, I think I've had enough roasted pumpkin-squash for a while. Like, the next month." The amusing thing is, no-one could explain to me why Thanksgiving. It's not like the Americans, who have Pilgrims and Native Americans and those little school plays. Canada just decides it's time to break out the turkey/ham/roasted beast of choice and the pumpkin pie and eat themselves into a stupour. "It's a harvest festival," was the best I could get.
Still, it's my kind of holiday. Day off work, lots of food, lots of wine and the company of good friends. We had ten of us over here for dinner, which was entertaining and worked rather well.
We still have pumpkin pie in the fridge.
Seriously.
Pumpkins in the greengrocers, stacked row upon row. Pumpkins in store windows, tastefully arranged with garlands of plastic autumn leaves. Pumpkins in the florists, in what is actually pretty creative arrangments. Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere, big glowing orange beachball sized gourds, awaiting people to buy them, take them home, scoop out the insides and carve spooky faces on them, whilst making the rest into sweet pumpkin pie.
But only the orange ones are pumpkins. The rest, including the faithful butternut of my student housing years (mmm, pumpkin soup), are called squashes here. Dex and I mock-argue over it every time we buy one.
"Pumpkin!"
"Squash!"
"Pumpkin!"
"Squash!"
"Pumpkin! It's a pumpkin where I'm from!"
"You Australians are all insane."
Unfortunately I shall miss Halloween, being in the land Down Under for that time. But Thanksgiving was fun, tho'. A vertible metric tonne of food, including enough roasted veggies to make even me go, "Eh, I think I've had enough roasted pumpkin-squash for a while. Like, the next month." The amusing thing is, no-one could explain to me why Thanksgiving. It's not like the Americans, who have Pilgrims and Native Americans and those little school plays. Canada just decides it's time to break out the turkey/ham/roasted beast of choice and the pumpkin pie and eat themselves into a stupour. "It's a harvest festival," was the best I could get.
Still, it's my kind of holiday. Day off work, lots of food, lots of wine and the company of good friends. We had ten of us over here for dinner, which was entertaining and worked rather well.
We still have pumpkin pie in the fridge.
